Search form

Inside the New York Public Library's Last, Secret Apartments

Some have spent decades empty and neglected. "The managers would sort of meekly say to me—do you want to see the apartment?" says Iris Weinshall, the library's chief operating officer, who at the beginning of her tenure toured all the system's branches. The first time it happened, she had the same reaction any library lover would: There’s an apartment here? Maybe I could live in the apartment.
"They would say, look, just be careful when you go up there," she says. "It was wild. You could have this gorgeous Carnegie…"
"And then… surprise!" says Risa Honig, the library's head of capital planning.